Rethinking Africa is a forward looking blog dedicated to the exchange of innovative thinking on issues affecting the advancement of African peoples wherever they are. We provide rigorous and insightful analyses on the issues affecting Africans and their vision of the world.

Sunday, 18 June 2017

Reminiscences – the “dot” is at once a colossus: Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, general of the people’s resistance, highlights grounding statistics on Biafra during phase-II of the Igbo genocide, 30 May 1967

(General of the people’s resistance)

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu: “They call us a dot on the map, and nobody’s sure quite where. Inside that dot were 700 lawyers, 500 physicians, 300 engineers, 8 million poets, 2 novelists of the first rank, and God knows what else – about one-third of all [African] intellectuals in Africa. Some dot. Those intellectuals had once fanned out all over Nigeria … where they had been envied and lynched and massacred. So they retreated to their homeland, to the dot” (30 May 1967) (added emphasis).DURING phases I-III of the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, Nigeria and its co-genocidist suzerain-state Britain murdered 3.1 million Igbo people, 25 per cent of the Igbo population, in this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. Tens of thousands of additional Igbo have been murdered by the dual-genocidists subsequently, in phase-IV of the genocide, begun on 13 January 1970 and continues till this day.

About Me

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is specialist on the state and on genocide and wars in Africa in the post-1966 epoch – beginning with the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-present day, the foundational and most gruesome genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of this nation’s population were murdered by Nigeria and its allies, principally Britain. Africa and the rest of the world largely stood by and watched as the perpetrators enacted this horror most ruthlessly. The world could have stopped this genocide; the world should have stopped this genocide. This genocide inaugurated Africa’s current age of pestilence. During the period, 12 million additional Africans have been murdered in further genocide in Rwanda (1994), Zaïre/DRCongo (variously, since the late 1990s) and Darfur – west of the Sudan – (since 2004) and in other wars in Africa. African peoples have, presently, no other choice but exit/dismantle the extant genocide-state (the bane of their existence and progress) and construct nation-centred states that serve their interests. He is the author of several books and papers on the subject and his new book is entitled Longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2018).